The rupee is not only the worst performing
currency in Asia, its the second worst performing currency in the emerging
markets. Here are 10 ways how a weak rupee
impacts you:

Weakening Rupee and Its Impact

Morale dampener to people in India: Except NRIs, who
stand to gain the most on account of the rupee weakness, most Indians are
worried because of the rapid decline in the rupee.

Higher EMIs: Central banks around
the world resort to higher rates to stem depreciation in the currency. That's
because higher interest rates could bring in higher capital inflows necessary
to finance current account deficit. That
means living with high equated monthly installments.

Stuttering growth: India's GDP
grew by 5 per cent in 2012-13, the slowest in a decade. The sharp depreciation
in the currency and the RBI's likely tight monetary policy will lower growth
expectations.

Slowdown in foreign investment:
Weak growth prospects will lead to a slowdown in capital inflows hurting
investment in Indian economy and more so in the crucial infrastructure sector.

Rising inflation: Global
commodities have 35 per cent weightage in India's wholesale inflation basket,
and as the rupee weakness, the prices of these commodities go up. Nomura
estimates that a 10 per cent depreciation in the rupee adds 60-80 basis points
to headline inflation.

Higher fuel price: Petrol prices
have been hiked twice this month. Such hikes will become a recurring feature as
rupee weakens further. Crude, which is priced in dollars, is India's biggest
import item and a depreciating rupee increases the cost of imports. The worst
part is Indians will have to pay more for fuel even though global prices have
hit a year-low.

Greater volatility in stocks:
Foreign funds have sold net $6.7 billion (largely from bonds) from May 22 to
June 24, 2013, Nomura says. The BSE Sensex has fallen nearly 8 per cent over
the same period. Foreign funds are likely to sell more because the weakness in
the rupee makes their investment unattractive. Shares in companies with higher
FII holdings will be under pressure.

Corporate profits: Exporters will
gain, but companies dependent on imported raw materials will see a sharp impact
on their bottom line. A weak rupee also exposes companies with unhedged
overseas loans.

Costlier foreign education: Those
planning to go to the U.S. will have to shell out at least Rs. 2-4 lakh more
for their expenses because of the sharp fall in the rupee, according to
industry body Assocham estimates.

Costlier foreign travel:
Travelling abroad will be costlier as you will have to pay more rupees to buy
dollars for your overseas trip/vacation.

A battery is a source of electrical energy. It is consisted by two substances, and represented by two electro-chemically active electrodes of different composition, both of which are immersed in an electrolyte that provides a conductive medium between them.

Principle of Batteries:

Electro-chemical reactions form the basis of conversion of chemical energy into electrical energy in batteries. The anode undergoes what is known as an oxidation reaction: during discharge two or more ions from the electrolyte combine with the anode to form a compound and release one or more electrons. Simultaneously, the cathode undergoes a reduction reaction.

Principle / Working of Battery

Types of Battery:

What is the difference between primary and secondary battery?

Primary Battery: A primary battery can discharge once only. A primary battery internal structure is more simple, it doesn't have to accommodate reversible volume changes. The primary battery has bigger quality ratio and volume ratio than rechargeable battery.

Secondary Battery: a second battery is rechargeable. When discharge a rechargeable battery, its electrode volume and structure cause a reversible change. An external source of direct electrical current supplies electrons to the anode and removes them from the cathode, forcing the chemical reactions into reverse until the cell is recharged.

How a Battery works?

During battery discharge, the electrons released at the negative electrode (anode) travel through an external circuit and reach the positive electrode (cathode).

What is the purpose of electrolyte in a battery?

Charge neutrality inside the battery is established by movement of ions in an electrolyte. Thus, the electrolyte is required to be a good conductor of ions. The electrolyte in a battery may or may not participate in the reactions occurring at the electrodes, but must support the reactions.

For example, the electrolyte does not participate in the cell reactions in nickel-cadmium and lithium-ion batteries.

In the case of the zinc-manganese dioxide dry cells, a variety of neutral/alkaline electrolytes such as ammonium chloride, zinc chloride and potassium hydroxide can be employed.

Depending on the chemicals used, the zinc-manganese dioxide cell with potassium hydroxide electrolyte can be formulated as a primary cell or a secondary cell.

Why is only sulphuric acid used in batteries? Why not hydrochloric acid or nitric acid?

The working of the lead-acid battery (commonly used for starting-lighting-ignition operations in automobiles) involves

formation of lead sulphate by oxidation of lead at the anode and

reduction of lead dioxide at the cathode.

Because the product of battery discharge is lead sulphate on both the electrodes, the total cell reaction is sometimes referred to as double sulphate reaction.

The formation of the lead sulphate products involves sulphuric acid, which is the electrolyte used in these batteries. During battery charge, lead sulphate is converted back to lead and lead dioxide, releasing sulphuric acid into the electrolyte.

Because sulphuric acid is

consumed during the discharge process and

released during the charge process.

The basic reactions in the battery involve uptake and release of sulphuric acid molecules, an electrolyte of sulphuric acid is used in these batteries.

Other acids that can be used in Batteries include:

It is, however, possible to use other electrolytes with the lead-lead dioxide couple. They include perchloric acid, fluoroboric acid, fluorosilicic acid, etc.

June 27, 2013

Demographic
features of Andhra Pradesh with a view into Natural and Social Advantages

Andhra Pradesh Population Census 2011 - Urban Population Overview

Census
2011 Rank:

Fourth largest state by area

fifth largest by
population

Total polpulation of 8.47
crore inhabitants.

The State accounts
for 7% of the country’s population.

Rate of Growth of
population during 2001-11 which has come down to 11.1 percent compared to 14.6
percent in the previous decade 1991-2001.

66.5% of the total
population lives in rural areas while 33.5% live in urban areas.

The Sex Ratio in
the State, up from 978 in 2001 to 992 in 2011, is higher than All India ratio of 940 in 2011.

Child Sex Ratio
(CSR) remains a concern as the state has registered a decline by 18 points in
CSR from 943 in the 2011 Census from 961 in 2001 Census

AP Census 2011

Literacy
rates of Andhra Pradesh:

Literacy Rate in
Andhra Pradesh has witnessed upward trend and is 67.66 percent as per 2011
population census. Of that, male literacy stands at 75.56 percent while female
literacy is at 59.74 percent.In actual numbers,
total literates in Andhra Pradesh stands at 51,438,510 of which 28,759,782 were
male were and 22,678,728 female.

Literacy rate in Andhra Pradesh stood at
60.47 percent
of which male and female were 71.16 percent and 50.29 percent literate
respectively in 2001.

The
geographical area
of the AP

Area:
275,045 sq km

5 categories of
soils spread across 9 Agro-Climatic zones.

2nd longest coastline in the country with a length of
974 km.

The State has a Forest area of 63,814 Sq.Kms as per the
Forest records, which accounts for 23.2% the total geographical area.

Socio-economic and demographic
advantages of Andhra Pradesh:

Andhra Pradesh historically
called as the "Rice Bowl of India" and continues to be the largest
producer of Rice in the country.

India's
longest rail tunnel in Kashmir to provide a key link between the Kashmir Valley
and Jammu region inaugurated by PM on 26/06/0213. The
18-km-long Banihal-Qazigund rail link, which includes the country’s longest
transportation tunnel – over 11-km long – through the Pir Panjal range, was executed
by Ircon at a cost of Rs 1,672 crore.

Tunnel
- 11kms

The
rail bridge between Udhampur and Banihal -- the train runs through the Pir
Panjal mountain range -- is the highest in the world. An engineering
marvel that took seven years to come up in a mountainous region. The tunnel has been
constructed using New Austrian Tunnelling Method, which has been used for the
first time on such a large scale in India

The new
train also narrows the link gap between the 64,000-km rail network spread
across the country and the 135-km network in the Kashmir Valley, which is yet
to be connected with the vast Indian Railway network.

the
IRNSS-1A is the first of the seven regional, satellite-aided navigation systems
built by ISRO.

The
satellite will be kept in geosynchronous Orbit at a height of 36000kms.

The System is intended to provide an absolute position
accuracy of better than 20 meters throughout India and within a region
extending approximately 2,000 km around it.

Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System

The IRNSS-1A will provide accurate information on the
position of cars/trucks, ships and aircraft vis-à-vis their destination, with
the help of a receiver.

It
could be an independent receiver, or built into a mobile phone, a car or a
ship. The satellite can provide precise information when the aircraft is about
to land on the runway.

The
pilot will know how far he is from the runway or at what height he is above the
runway, with an accuracy of 20 metres.

Unlike
the Global Positioning System (GPS) which can be used anywhere, this is called
a regional navigation system because it is available to users in India and the
surrounding region. A highly accurate atomic clock is part of the navigation
payload of the satellite.

Thus,
the IRNSS applications include terrestrial, aerial and marine navigation,
disaster management, tracking of vehicles, guiding hikers and travellers, and
visual and voice navigation for drivers.

Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System

The
ground segment of IRNSS constellation would consist of a

Master Control Center (MCC),

ground stations to track and estimate the satellites'
orbits and ensure the integrity of the network (IRIM), and

additional ground stations to monitor the health of the
satellites with the capability of issuing radio commands to the satellites
(TT&C stations).

__________________

Tags: explanation and working of Indian Regional Navigational
Satellite System, India's GPS system, Indian Regional Navigational Satellite
System, ISRO Navigation Centre (INC), sattelite navigation system of india,
what is Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System

Definition:
The number of
persons employed per 1000
persons is known as Work Force Participation rate (WFPR).As
per the
current daily status, a person is considered working (employed) for the entire day if
he/she had worked for 4
hours or more during a day.Around 94% of the workers in A.P. are
in the unorganized sector.

Organised
Sector - Status:

The number of
establishments in the organized sector grew to 19,591 by March, 2012.

Of which, 13,175 were in Public Sector and
6,416 were in Private Sector.

20.28 lakhs persons
were employed in the organized Sector as on March, 2012.

The Public Sector
alone accounted for 12.76 lakhs and the remaining 7.52 lakhs were employed in
the Private Sector.

A total of 1,97,087
candidates were enrolled, 9,530 vacancies notified to Employment Exchanges and
820 candidates placed in 2012-13 (up to Oct.12). There were 19,07,027
candidates on live register of Employment Exchanges at the end of October,
2012.

While Andhra Pradesh has registered an annual compound growth of 1.70% in employment between 2004-05 and 2009-10 - up from 0.70%
between 1999- 2000 and 2004-05.

Similarly, the employment elasticity which represents the responsiveness of employment generation to
change in gross domestic product stands at 0.19% for Andhra Pradesh as against the all India employment
elasticity of 0.28%.

June 25, 2013

Retirement fund body EPFO is likely to pay an interest rate
of 8.5 per cent on provident fund deposits for 2013-14 to its over five crore
subscribers, the same as provided in 2012-13.

As per the practice, the EPFO would have to place the
proposal before its advisory body Finance and Investment Committee (FIC) after
which it is considered by the apex decision making body Central Board of
Trustees (CBT)headed by the Labour Minister for taking final call on the
matter.

As per the 2008-Investment Pattern adopted by the EPFO, the
body can invest up to 55 per cent of its huge corpus of over Rs 5 lakh crore in
the state and central securities.

Definition: A
desert is a landscape or region that receives little precipitation. Deserts are
defined as areas with an average annual precipitation of less than 250
millimetres (10 in) per year, or as areas where more water is lost by
evapo-transpiration than falls as precipitation.

"Tianhe",
meaning Milky Way. Breaks
the U.S. monopoly in the field of strategic technology. Tianhe-2,
a supercomputer developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology,
achieved processing speeds of 33.86 petaflops (1000 trillion calculations) per
second on a benchmarking test.It
earned the supercomputer the number one spot in the Top 500 survey of
supercomputers, agency reports said. Five of the world’s 10 fastest computers are
installed in the U.S., the survey said, with the two in China, two in Germany
and one in Japan. Most
of the Tianhe-2’s parts are developed in China, except for its main processors,
which are designed by the U.S. firm Intel. But the U.S. still dominates the
overall supercomputer rankings, with 252 systems making the top
500.

Supermoon’ is a situation when the Moon is slightly closer to Earth in its orbit than on average, and this effect is most noticeable when it occurs at the same time as a full Moon.

the largest and brightest full Moon– 22nd June 2013

It is called a Supermoon because this is a very noticeable alignment that at first glance would seem to have an effect.

The Moon’s distance from Earth varies because it follows an elliptical orbit rather than a circular one.

2013 year the Supermoon is up to 14 per cent larger and 30 per cent brighter than a typical Full Moon is.

Reason for supermoon formation:

This is a result of the Moon reaching its perigee -- the closest that it gets to the Earth during the course of its orbit. During perigee, the Moon is about 356,992 km away, as compared to the 405,696 km away that it is at its furthest distance from the Earth (apogee).

Impact of Supermoon on Earth:

The effects on Earth from a supermoon are minor, and according to the most detailed studies by terrestrial seismologists and volcanologists, the combination of the Moon being at its closest to Earth in its orbit, and being in its ’full moon’ configuration (relative to the Earth and Sun), should not affect the internal energy balance of the Earth. Scientists have dismissed notions that the phenomenon could cause bizarre behaviour or natural disasters. Its most significant impact is likely to be on the tide. Experts say the next ‘supermoon’ is expected to appear in August 2014.

1. On July 19, the Cassini space telescope will take only the third photo of Earth from outer space. The first such photo was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from a distance of 6 billion kilometres. The result was an iconic image in which the Earth looked like a “____ ____ ___”, according to cosmologist Carl Sagan. Fill in the blanks.

2. On June 20, American entrepreneur Elon Musk announced new technology for his electric car company. According to it, the battery powering each car could be swapped at automated ‘supercharging’ stations within 90 seconds, which is shorter than it takes to refill a petrol tank. Name his company.

3. On June 21, researchers from France reported that their studies of muscles in the human body had revealed that they had strange, unnatural properties - such as the ability to loosen when stretched instead of stiffening. As a result, what class of materials did the scientists say that muscles could belong to?

4. There is a special equation in astronomy, created in 1961. Solving the equation gives rise to the probable number of civilisations in our galaxy with which we could communicate. On June 21, an American astronomer named Sara Seager proposed some changes to this equation and brought it to a more reasonable form. Name the scientist who formulated the equation in 1961.

5. At the moment, the amount of data that can be stored on a DVD or a VCD is limited by ____’s law. The law states that the smallest spot of a beam of light, which is used to ‘burn’ data onto discs, cannot be less wide than half its wavelength. Thus, only a certain number of ‘spots’ can be accommodated on the disc’s surface. On June 19, Australian researchers claimed to have invented a new way of burning these discs and circumventing ____’s law, thereby storing 1,000 TB of data where only 4-5 GB could be. Fill in the blank.

6. China : Tianhe-2 : : India : ?

7. On June 17, 1963 (50 years ago), Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. Name the spacecraft aboard which she made her journey.

8. Quarks are the smallest possible bits of matter in nature. They combine together to form other, bigger particles such as protons and neutrons, which in turn combine in different ways with electrons to form atoms and molecules. Depending on the number of quarks in a combination, different particles are conceived with different properties. Last week, scientists for the first time observed four quarks coming together to form a strange particle. How many quarks make up a proton?

9. India’s first global positioning system (GPS) satellite will be launched on July 1 by the Indian Space Research Organisation. What is its name?

10. June 19 was the 390th birth anniversary of a French physicist and inventor, after whom the SI unit of pressure is named. He was also responsible for building the world’s first mechanical calculator around 1645. Name him.

DISASTERS AFFECT almost every part of the world. According to a World Bank report titled “natural hazards, unnatural disasters,” floods and storms are the most widespread while droughts are prevalent more often in Africa. Regions which suffer from frequent droughts and floods are also home to most of the hungry in the world. Climate change is expected to exacerbate the situation. There is, therefore, a need to recognize hazards and vulnerability in a comprehensive manner and take effective steps for prevention, mitigation and management.

Management of Disasters in India

In the case of India, natural disasters like floods, cyclones and drought occur repeatedly in different parts of the country. Many districts of India are prone to multiple hazards and face different disasters around the year. Earthquake, hailstorms.

Communalism is a belief that all those who have a common religion also have, as a result, common social, political, cultural and economic interests and identities. It is a notion that religion forms the base of the society and a basic unit of division and that it is religion which determines all other interests of its adherents.

The genesis of communalism in India can be found in the British conquest of India and its impact on the people. The British conquest marked the decline of upper class Muslims, particularly in Bengal where they lost their preeminence in employment in army, judiciary and administration. Slowly with the Permanent Settlement of 1793 along with the making of English the official court language in 1833 the upper class Muslims began to lose their power and influence. In the Indian situation, the loss of Muslims was the gain of Hindus as they had responded more positively to education and other modernizing forces.

(3)It shall come into force on such date as the Central Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette appoint; and different dates may be appointed for different provisions of this Act and for different States, and any reference to commencement in any provision of this Act in relation to any State shall be construed as a reference to the commencement of that provision in that State.

1. Creation of new institutions at National level, State level and District level as follows:

i) National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA)

ii) State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA)

iii) District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA)

2. Constitution of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF)

3. Setting up of National Disaster Reserve funds and State Disaster Reserve Fund for immediate responsework

4. Formation of National Institute of Disaster Mitigation (NIDM) for building the capacities of various stakeholders involved in Disaster Mitigation and Response programs

5, Multi-stakeholder participation of Corporates and NGOs in the Disaster Relief, Rehabilitation, Mitigationand Risk Reduction work

6. A National Executive Committee (NEC) was constituted under the NDMA with Union Home Secretary asthe Chairperson to monitor, co-ordinate and oversee the functions of the Departments concerned withrespect to Disaster Mitigation

7. The State level Relief and Rehabilitation Departments were renamed as Department of DisasterManagement and held responsible for Disaster Mitigation, Risk Reduction, Preparedness and earlyResponse

“Disaster” means a catastrophe or calamity, resulting from
natural or man made causes or by accident or negligence, which results in
substantial loss of life or property, or human suffering or degradation of
environment and shall include the calamities referred to in the First Schedule
and does not include incidents like
riots, wars, terrorist activities, etc.